-Raids at start sucked. Mixed bag; 50-50. T7 is largely not talked about on the forums because most people prefer to talk about Ulduar being good, ToC sucking (it was better than T7), and then ICC usually split between Lich King being awesome and rest of it being above average.
-Lore concerning everyone's beloved WC3 heroes was cheesy. Arthas has a young version of his soul at the bottom of Icecrown Citadel in the Nerubian depths? <Insert cliche Dr. Claw joke and complaints about Anub'arak and Kel'thuzad>

Personally Naxx is one of my favourite raids and I liked all the Arthas lore. Wrath was a big advancement in terms of storytelling, which continued to some extent in Cataclysm and much more in MoP.

Wrath was great if you wanted to PvE. It was horrible for PvP. TBC's PvE wasn't as good but it was close. The raids were difficult and getting gear felt like accomplishing something. Arenas could last too long but a few minor changes could have really made it near perfect balance. When Wrath came out it completely ruined PvP for me. Matches would end in seconds without you being able to react. I couldn't even kill people that fast on my Rogue in vanilla with full t2.5 doing 3k eviscerates when people had 4k health...I went from a Gladiator every season to someone who just didn't give a crap about PvP because any idiot who could spam their highest damaging attack could kill me in seconds. Not saying that I couldn't get Gladiator now if I tried, just that it completely ruined the fun for me. That and getting 2500 the first week every season just wasn't fun anymore.

I agree that it was the best time, anyone could get into ICC and see the content but only the best got to be called Kingslayer, also having more bosses to kill in ICC kept motivation and something to do. In other words everyone didn't instantly quit because they went 12/12 on patch day.

Wrath had its perks (ICC, Ulduar, the chopper, beautiful zones with amazing musical ambience and great quest lines) but the one thing I remember most is the utter horseshit that was "5-man Heroics"! Excuse the harsh language, but what a fucking joke those were (and, sadly, continue to be to this day...). What is heroic about going brain-afk and AoEing entire rooms at a time? Hell, I once ran heroic Utgard Pinnacle with a tank so shit-faced he couldn't speak half a coherent sentence in vent and he still had no problems keeping aggro on 4+ mobs - hilarious and very very depressing at the same time, seeing as we wouldn't have made it past the first group in heroic Shattered Halls back in BC and rightly so. I completely removed Polymorph from my bars in WotLK, it was literally NEVER needed in pve. Sad.

Don't get me wrong, I loved that they made raiding more accessible, I just think they waaaay overdid it with the complete removal of obligatory CC on trash. When I compare 10man Naxx with Karazhan, the latter was a bazillion times more fun. Sure, it took longer and more thought on every pull, but man was the feeling of accomplishment when Malchezzar finally died awesome! Never had that same degree of pride in WotLK... wifh the exceptions of heroic Ulduar and ICC.

I do think the continent itself, the raids, the dungeons,tanking where/was amazing(better than vanilla/tbc/cata/MoP).

But healing, while I enjoyed it, was rather boring. I played a Holy paladin during ICC. It was pretty much.
1) Put beacon on off-tank(re-apply every 5mins)
2) Judgement every 10 sec.
3) Spam holy light on main tank.
4) Use cooldowns when using Divine plea.
5) move out of fire, if I had too. on some bosses(festergut) I would just stand in the exact same spot for the entire encounter.

And that was is it, we only used 1 healing spell. While in cata/MoP, I was using way more healing spells. Divine light, Holy radiance, World of glory, holy light, holy shock, Light of dawn, sacred shield & Light's Hammer.

I suspect the people complaining about easy heroic 5 mans are only remembering it towards the end of the expansion when they massively outgeared them. Loken and the Insanity boss were hard, even on normal mode when the expansion was new.

Maybe he's mistaking it for The Light of Dawn and Bane of the Fallen King. Both of which could be pretty hard to attain depending on your guild. Side note: I was the first Resto Shaman in a 10 man HM LK kill with only 2 healers. I had to build a specific MP5 Crit healing set with very little haste to do it....slowest heals ever.

Originally Posted by rederoin

I do think the continent itself, the raids, the dungeons,tanking where/was amazing(better than vanilla/tbc/cata/MoP).

But healing, while I enjoyed it, was rather boring. I played a Holy paladin during ICC. It was pretty much.
1) Put beacon on off-tank(re-apply every 5mins)
2) Judgement every 10 sec.
3) Spam holy light on main tank.
4) Use cooldowns when using Divine plea.
5) move out of fire, if I had too. on some bosses(festergut) I would just stand in the exact same spot for the entire encounter.

And that was is it, we only used 1 healing spell. While in cata/MoP, I was using way more healing spells. Divine light, Holy radiance, World of glory, holy light, holy shock, Light of dawn, sacred shield & Light's Hammer.

Paladins were generally pretty strait forward until recent years. As a Shaman though I was almost always using my full arsenal of spells and totems. I had over 80 binds with different abilities and add another 10 for down ranked heals. I like the healing style now because it makes everyone play like Shamans use to.

Maybe he's mistaking it for The Light of Dawn and Bane of the Fallen King. Both of which could be pretty hard to attain depending on your guild. Side note: I was the first Resto Shaman in a 10 man HM LK kill with only 2 healers.

Paladins were generally pretty strait forward until recent years. As a Shaman though I was generally almost always using my full arsenal of spells and totems. I had over 80 binds with different abilities and add another 10 for down ranked heals. I like the healing style now because it makes everyone play like Shamans use to.

And, yet, the new talent system is the first time in a long time that we've had any real choices to make. The old talent system was paint-by-numbers (in other words, if you didn't pick the elitistjerks talent spec, you had the wrong spec).

The whole point of the new talent system is to give us actual, real choices... and it has done exactly that. Warlocks aren't the only class that lost/have to choose key abilities.

Also: Why complain about the loss of shadow bolt? Malefic grasp makes a lot more sense for affliction than shadow bolt ever did (affliction being a dot spec and malefic grasp proccing your dots). Instead of instant shadow bolts, we get a soul shard. Soul shard = on-demand DPS increase. Again, much better than an instant shadow bolt.

Eh? The rogue talent tree has exactly zero talent choices when it comes to raiding. Tiers either have mandatory talents, or completely useless talents. At least in cata I could choose to spec for massive damage reduction in exchange for a small (~5%) damage loss.

WOTLK followed in TBC's place fairly well, but in no way superior. I think TBC + changing times put WoW into the spotlight perfectly for WOTLK and due to TBC it was by far and away the best MMO at the point and a lot more people stepped into gaming. I think a lot of people who think WOTLK is the best expansion either joined during WOTLK or were casual during TBC, if people played TBC like they did WOTLK, they would've probably enjoyed it more.

The only thing WOTLK has is it brought the game down to casual level. You no longer had difficult instances, grinds to speak of, etc. I would presume that's more appealing to the "masses", but it does not make it a better game.

My opinion at least. And yes, it's gone downhill since TBC with very little momentary improvements to speak of.

From pvp to pve, from hardcore to casual. Patch 3.3.5 was icing on the cake.

Shifting away from WotLK formula was a huge mistake. A wise man once said: Never change a winning team.

They should've added more content, not completely change how things work. Blizzard hasn't reached the sweet spot again since 4.0

That's what happens when you have a marine biologist running the game. He's changing things for the sake of changing. Probably to look busy because it's apparent the guy knows fuck all about actual balance.

LFD (note: since we talk about 3.3.5 not start or anything..) was tedious, you didnt need healer on the dungeons and in some cases not even tank for the trash at least. You could just 3man the content by then anyway. They were basically like scenarios are now.
It wasnt all that great to tanks or healers who wanted to do more than "throw hot and snore while dps is either slow or fast (theres wasnt between)" and for dps it was kinda tedious as well. How is spamming your aoe compelling gameplay? Its not.

As for raids? ICC wasnt all that fun for the tanks, which I was back then. Healers were bored too I remember. Dps.. hmm depends on the fight. Normals were jokes (Saurfang dead in like 2-3 mins?) but most people did heroics on some fights.

The buff was too much tbh back then. Scaling was over the roof because heroic gear wasn't taken to account at start of expansion. Gotta remember it was sorta bandaided in demands of hc players due naxx.
Buffing players is fine but when it goes to blatant mechanic ignoring, tedious fights, not fun gameplay (press aoe threat once to hold aggro! Play bejeweled and taunt at X stacks!)

Wrath might've been fun to most people because they either
1) Started raiding then because easier content and puggable stuff.
2) Guilds were actually up and running. Cata destroyed most guilds and mop didnt really revive them magically

Guilds made wrath fun, not the actual content or its difficulty. Unless you really wanted to spam one aoe button and watch TV at same time :P

"In the tone of their complaint you can see a mind already made up. Instead, it’s about affirmation they expected and didn’t receive. It’s not about the game getting universal praise from every writer reviewing it. It’s about getting universal praise for buying it."

I suspect the people complaining about easy heroic 5 mans are only remembering it towards the end of the expansion when they massively outgeared them. Loken and the Insanity boss were hard, even on normal mode when the expansion was new.

Erm, no. Loken was never particularly hard if you had opposable thumbs and the mental capacity to run out of his AE. Regardless, boss difficulty wasn't the issue, the total lack of trash difficulty was. For all the challenge they posed, they could have just left trash groups out entirely. The day my first toon dinged 80 I tanked heroic UK and it was a total breeze - NOT a good thing, IMO.

LFD (note: since we talk about 3.3.5 not start or anything..) was tedious, you didnt need healer on the dungeons and in some cases not even tank for the trash at least. You could just 3man the content by then anyway. They were basically like scenarios are now.
It wasnt all that great to tanks or healers who wanted to do more than "throw hot and snore while dps is either slow or fast (theres wasnt between)" and for dps it was kinda tedious as well. How is spamming your aoe compelling gameplay? Its not.

As for raids? ICC wasnt all that fun for the tanks, which I was back then. Healers were bored too I remember. Dps.. hmm depends on the fight. Normals were jokes (Saurfang dead in like 2-3 mins?) but most people did heroics on some fights.

The buff was too much tbh back then. Scaling was over the roof because heroic gear wasn't taken to account at start of expansion. Gotta remember it was sorta bandaided in demands of hc players due naxx.
Buffing players is fine but when it goes to blatant mechanic ignoring, tedious fights, not fun gameplay (press aoe threat once to hold aggro! Play bejeweled and taunt at X stacks!)

Wrath might've been fun to most people because they either
1) Started raiding then because easier content and puggable stuff.
2) Guilds were actually up and running. Cata destroyed most guilds and mop didnt really revive them magically

Guilds made wrath fun, not the actual content or its difficulty. Unless you really wanted to spam one aoe button and watch TV at same time :P